So Ana did, and hurtled across the gap between buildings to the next rooftop, and then the next, and Elara and Xu followed. Below them in the street, Ana counted at least a dozen—maybe two dozen—Messiers swarming the abandoned shop they had just left.

Di would’ve tsked and told her that there was a 92.7 percent chance of her absolutely screwing this up—but Di wasn’t here, and there was no percentage of success she could bank on. She hoped she wasn’t leading Elara and Xu to certain death.

After she hopped down onto a generator, and then the street, someone grabbed her by her coat and spun her around. Her vison filled with the blue eyes of a Messier.

“Identifying—” it began.

“GET DOWN!” Elara shouted a moment before something whizzed past her head. A boomerang with its blade glowing a pale yellow. It struck the Messier across the neck and lopped its head clean off.

The body stumbled back, fuses hissing from its torso.

Ana stared, befuddled, at the headless Metal. “You—you took its head off!”

“You said they were alive once, right?” Elara straightened Ana’s coat, running her fingers peculiarly down her lapels. “I can’t help you get them out of the HIVE if they’re dead.”

“But it’s—it’s headless!”

“But not dead,” she pointed out, and stretched her left hand back toward the dead Messier, one of her bracelets glowing. The boomerang jerked out of the Messier’s body and returned to Elara’s hand with a swish through the air, and she placed it back on her belt.

Three more Messiers appeared behind them in the grimy, dark alley.

Of couse there were more.

Ana tapped the comm-link on her coat. “Robb, Jax—I could use that pickup.”

She didn’t wait for them to respond before she shoved Elara and Xu out of the alleyway and into the bustling crowd of a busy night market.

Vendors hawking jewelry and spare mechanical parts shouted at buyers from across the way. The sound of lutes and fiddles snaked through the din. It was disorienting—to be surrounded by so many people so suddenly when she was running for her life.

Jax replied, “We’ll be there—”

The sound of a Metroid crackled through the crowd, and everyone ducked, scattering into alcoves like frightened mice.

“—Was that a gunshot?” finished Jax.

“Not the time for questions!” she replied, and looked around the market for the tallest building. The slums were low to the ground, except for an old tower that shot up into the sky like a black spike. It looked like a condemned business high-rise, leaning slightly to the side, its blown-out windows making it look like a skeleton with knocked-out teeth.

It would do.

“Make for that building!” she told Elara and Xu.

“That’s a death trap,” Elara replied, shaking her head. “I am not going—”

An electrified bullet slammed into a basket of fruit in a stall beside them, leaving a cantaloupe smoking.

“—I’m going,” she quickly corrected.

Elara and her Metal set out at a run toward the abandoned building, as Jax told Ana his ETA in her ear—two minutes. That was both too much time and no time at all. The scar on her stomach seared her with pain. She pressed her hand against her healed wound, gritted her teeth, and ran faster.